


Captain Becker's Greatest Hits

by TheLibranIniquity



Category: Primeval
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Darkest Timeline, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-26
Updated: 2010-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLibranIniquity/pseuds/TheLibranIniquity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“But one day you might hold one of these in your hand and it won't be a game then.”</i> Five times Becker shoots to kill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captain Becker's Greatest Hits

1

“I'm going to kill you!”

Hilary laughs off the threat, knowing that behind his defensive wall, nothing can touch him. He crouches next to his most trusted lieutenant and whispers him instructions while he loads ammunition into his gun. He stands up, gun raised and aims where he knows the commanding officer of the pillow army is going to be.

He sees movement, and fires. “Bang!”

Before he can find out whether he killed his target or not, something swoops in from behind Hilary and takes his gun.

“But Da-aaddy!”

But Daddy's shaking his head even as he pockets the gun and looks out across from Hilary's fort. “Giles, what have I told you about playing war games with your brother?”

Giles' head pops out from behind a tent of washing line and bedsheets. “That it's morally responhensible,” he rattles off.

“Reprehensible,” Daddy says, and he holds his hand out. “Yours too.”

Giles climbs out of the tent and hands Daddy his gun. “They are empty.”

“It's still wrong. Go on, inside with you.”

Giles pouts, but does what he's told. Daddy turns back to Hilary and holds out a hand. “Come on, titch, you too.”

Hilary holds on tight and is lifted out of the vegetable patch. Daddy sets him on the wall beside the back door and kneels down so they're looking right at each other. He holds up the gun in front of him. “These are dangerous, Hilary. It doesn't matter whether they're empty or they've got ammunition in them. Do you understand that?”

Hilary thinks he does, and he nods. “We were just playing,” he whispers.

“I know,” Daddy smiles. “But one day you might hold one of these in your hand and it won't be a game then, so it's not going to be a game now.”

Hilary nods again.

“Good lad.” Daddy ruffles his hair. “Now how about we see what your mum's been up to in the kitchen, eh?”

Hilary beams, jumps down off the wall and scampers inside the house.

2

“Come on, keep moving, keep moving!”

Lieutenant Hilary Becker hates the desert. Actually he hates anything hotter than Blackpool in May, which is probably anywhere with half-decent weather. Southern Afghanistan in the middle of December more than qualifies, even in the dead of night, which it is now, and it kind of sucks.

He's not about to let on about that to anyone under his command, though; he's been through all-weather training – they all have – and it's not that he can't cope in the current conditions.

He just hates it.

It's something he doesn't have to try hard not to think about right now though; one of the patrols came their way, bloody and battered and everyone reporting the exact same thing – insurgents approaching their location very fast, and very armed.

“Keep fucking moving!”

Getting the already-injured out of the line of fire is his first priority – they can bitch about their wounded egos later, once they've been seen to by a medic and chucked back out into the fray again – and Becker wastes no time setting out a perimeter and swearing the loudest when they realise the enemy's closer than the reports indicated.

He gets into as close to a textbook position as it's physically possible to do and takes aim. The unit he's got out here are all older than him, some of them with more combat experience than he's had years in the British educational system, and even though he wants to shoot them himself half the time he knows they're the best he's going to get. And he knows that right now they don't need some wet-behind-the-ears kid giving them orders they don't need.

They just need to be able to see their targets.

Eventually they appear, increasingly distinct shadows coming out of the dust and moving towards Becker and his unit at an almost preternatural pace.

Becker stares down the sight of his weapon, and tries not to think about who he's aiming at – whose son or brother or father they might be.

He targets the lead insurgent and, satisfied he can track him for a few seconds longer, gives a hand signal to the rest of the unit to fire as well.

Eventually it all calms down, but it's a long time before Becker can breathe enough to sleep.

3

Okay, this was just getting ridiculous.

Rather than get into a staring contest with Professor Cutter – which never seemed to go his way, now he thought about it – Captain Hilary Becker shoulders his weapon, folds his arms across his chest and waits for the shit to hit the fan.

It doesn't take long. Despite Temple's best efforts to persuade the rest of the team that the pair of dinosaurs who had come through the anomaly were really just harmless baby herbivores, it still doesn't hide the fact that the prehistoric twin set were each the size of a double decker bus and capable of some serious speed.

And if Cutter and the rest of his little Girl Guide squad don't work out a way to get the kids back through the anomaly before it closed, Becker's fairly sure there's not going to be much left of the good village of Stone Cross. Not that there was much of it to begin with, but still. It's the principle of the thing.

Tweedle Dee, as it turns out, doesn't take much coaxing to get off the B road and back in the direction of the anomaly, eventually ambling through it at a most respectable pace. Unfortunately that just leaves Tweedle Dum, and he has much more of a temper issue than his brother.

Cutter won't let Becker so much as aim his weapon at the dinosaur though, being rather loud in his opinion that getting the creatures home and alive is their primary objective. Becker's fairly sure he was given a very different objective when he was recalled to Britain and handed the ARC assignment, but the civilians on the team all seem to be siding with Cutter, and Becker distinctly remembers the day he was told that under no circumstances is he to shoot the people he's tasked with the security of.

The dinosaurs, on the other hand...

Tweedle Dum doesn't care for the anomaly, or Temple's increasingly frantic efforts to guide him in the direction thereof. In fact, Tweedle Dum seems to decide that the better thing to do would be to take out the middle man altogether, and from nowhere launches into a run directly for Temple.

Becker's weapon is armed and aimed before he consciously realises what he's doing, and he blocks out Cutter's increasingly high-pitched objections as he searches for the most vulnerable part of the reptile's body to shoot.

He finds it and, just in time for the shot to work without crushing a now frantic Temple in the process, Becker shoots.

Instantly the dinosaur's legs buckle and it rolls over onto its side, making a loud whining noise straight out of _Jurassic Park_. Instantly Miss Maitland rushes over to the creature, while Cutter and Miss Lewis make for Temple, who's collapsed as well, but due to adrenaline rather than being shot.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Miss Maitland yells, her voice carrying easily across the open countryside.

Becker wants to be just as undignified, to yell back that it was either take the shot or bury Temple's crushed remains alongside Stephen Hart's back in London, but he holds himself back. It's just a dinosaur, and there was a life at stake.

Even if he doesn't think Cutter's team will quite grasp that.

4

Standing in the smouldering ruins of the late Professor Cutter's university, Becker faces down an impossible army. Not the pillows or potatoes of his childhood, or even the Taliban of his pre-dinosaur hunting career. Not even dinosaurs.

An army of men staring at him from identical faces, wearing identical uniforms and aiming identical weapons at him.

Becker knows that killing the clones won't mean anything to them – something about genetic memory that Connor had tried to explain to him once before he'd waved it off and accepted the one line version that they're a bit like Cylons, really. Death won't really kill them, but it doesn't stop Becker defending the last remaining members of Danny Quinn's team as he calmly and quickly shoots each clone in the head. Without their mistress there to bark orders, they're fixed in position even as they fall like dominoes to the ground.

And if he tries to convince himself he's done the right thing when he sees a dozen identical glassy expressions staring up at him from underneath identical black caps – well, then, Becker figures he's entitled to a bit of wishful thinking.

Just for today.

5

If this is the future, Major Hilary Becker thinks, he wants no part of it. He's standing on a plateau of what used to be part of Plymouth city centre, according to the GPS in his tac vest that gave him a brief flash of co-ordinates before frying completely. Everything around him looks like it's come straight out of a Hollywood post-apocalyptic film, right down to the artfully crumbling architecture that could be anything between forty and four hundred years old and the discoloured sea off in the distance.

He's not alone, though. He and Connor Temple spent three weeks tracking through the anomalies, and although they got separated somewhere in the Carboniferous, Becker's finally managed to catch up with his target. The man Helen Cutter had referred to as the architect before Christine Johnson's soldier had shot her in the head.

He's old, older than Becker expected. Wearing nondescript clothing that looks as worn and faded as the scenery around them and the wildest of expressions on his face.

Becker wonders when was the last time the architect had seen another human being. 

The man takes a step forward, only to stop at the sight of Becker's rifle, loaded and raised. He's only got one bullet left, and if everything he and Connor learned before they set off through the anomalies was true, then he's got to make it count.

“Becker?” the architect whispers. “That really you?”

“Major Becker, Anomaly Research Centre,” Becker barks, his aim never wavering. “Identify yourself.”

“It's me...” the man says. “Connor.”

At that Becker's rifle lowers, seemingly of its own volition. “That's impossible. You're...” Old. Much older than Connor had been just two days before. Old enough to be Becker's dad.

“Connor Temple,” the man says. Now that Becker's paying attention, he sounds sad. “Haven't seen you in years, Becker. I thought you were dead.”

Two days – and the same. Becker raises his rifle again. “I don't believe you.”

The man – architect – Connor? – closes his eyes briefly, and fishes inside his shirt for something. He holds out his hand to Becker, and he reluctantly takes a step closer to see.

It's Connor's ring, the one he's worn under his shirts for longer than Becker's known him. He still doesn't know the significance of it, the story behind the ring itself, but he understands its meaning here and now.

“You're the architect?” Becker asks, searching Connor's face for confirmation. Dread wells up in his gut, and it doubles when Connor nods.

“I did it – it's my fault.”

“What is?”

“The anomalies,” Connor explains. “I thought if I moved them enough, studied them enough then I could stop them, but -” He breaks off, closing his eyes tightly, and when he speaks again it's so quiet Becker almost can't hear him. “Everything that's happened – Ryan, Stephen, Cutter, Abby -” his voice chokes up, “- it happened because of me.”

“No.” Becker can't imagine his colleague – his friend doing anything on that scale. Not intentionally – and not ever.

Connor shakes his head. “You've got your orders, Major.”

“I -” Before Becker can even form the thoughts needed to protest, Connor grabs the rifle barrel, moving much faster than anything Becker could have expected from him, and pushes it against his own forehead. He holds it there with a tight, unmoving grip.

“You've got your orders, Major,” he repeats.

“This isn't going to change anything.”

“Not the past,” Connor agrees. “But the future's still up for grabs – your future.”

“And yours.”

“No.” Connor shakes his head again. “Not mine. I destroyed the world – not much coming down from that.” His grip on the rifle tightens further, even as he takes one hand off and uses it to guide Becker's hand – incapable of resisting – to wrap around the trigger.

“Follow your orders, Major,” formerly Professor Connor Temple orders him.

Becker stares down the barrel at him. Surrounded by decaying city and standing opposite the infamous architect, Becker closes his eyes and wishes he could be anywhere else but here.

Then he pulls the trigger.


End file.
